X-ray microprobe studies of Hungarian background and urban aerosols

摘要

In order to determine the polluting atmospheric sources in urban and background areas source apportionment of the air particulate matter is necessary. Hitherto these studies were mostly based on bulk composition measurements of the aerosol. Source profiles, i.e. the concentrations of several elements for air particulate matter originating from one source, can be deduced from the receptor data using a number of multivariate techniques among which the chemical mass balance. The application is limited by the large number of observations that must be made for each of the variables. Often an elaborated sample preparation is necessary for fractionating the sample into several sub samples, according to the density, particle diameter or other relevant properties. Often this may results in poorly resolved source profiles. The aim of the present work is to find the relative abundance of the particle types originating from two different background monitoring stations in the middle of the Great Hungarian Plain. In urban areas most pollutants originate from traffic and municipal waste incineration. Since heavy metals play an important role in these samples the highly sensitive x-ray microscope (XRM) of the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) of the Brookhaven National Laboratory was used. A feasibility study on individual aerosol particles sampled at the above background stations and in the urban area of Budapest is discussed. (ERA citation 17:007543)